My Month in Numbers... January Edition

6 - The number of times I went to a work out class at Hickam gym... which definitely falls a little short of the New Years Resolution I made.  This leaves room for improvement in February!

10 - The number of months one of the cutest babies in the world is... who, incidentally, flew all the way from Arizona to see us with his parents!

60.57 - The number of dollars I spent on a sweet pair of shoes that is quickly becoming my favorite pair of shoes I have ever owned!

9 - The number my oldest nephew turned on his Birthday ...  And he made the greatest decision to get baptized too!  How AWESOME is that??

46% - The percentage that Mitt Romney won Florida by on January 31st! :D

94 out of 100 - The score I got on my first Bio Med test... I'll take that any day.

15 - The row we sat on in the end zone at the PRO BOWL!  Oh yeah brother!

27 (approximate..) episodes of 'How I Met Your Mother' that were watched ( thank you Pinedo family...)

14 - The new total of Alabama Football National Titles.  Roll Tide.

Surf's Up!

So I haven't posted in a while...

And it seems like the longer I go without posting, the more I think "Oh my heck, I have so much to catch up on.  Where do I start?"  And I become overwhelmed... and you know that moment, when you think of all you have to do, so you just decide not to do ... any of it??  It happens to my blog.  And since this blog is somewhat my form of journaling, I feel guilty.

SO!

Life is good.  Mike and I are really enjoying every minute we have together, and trying to explore every last bit of this island!

The other day we went into Waikiki and used a groupon that my wonderful mother-in-law had given us a while back.  I got to go surfing!!


Oh boy it was definitely an adventure!!  I loved it but was also frustrated because it was hard to control the board and there were sooo many people that I was worried I would crash into them.  Luckily, I didn't!

I thought that it might be kind of like snowboarding, but it actually really isn't at all.  

After I was all done!  It was great, I wish I was better at it though!

Another groupon adventure we got to do was having out photos done on the beach!  It was absolutely perfect.

I was so glad to get these pictures done, we had a blast doing them!

Here are a few of my favorites...

It was fun to get them done, we also have a ton of WONDERFUL photos that my cousins Nate and Marilinda took on their trip out here... which will certainly be a topic of future posts! :)

Another fun happening was game night!  this was the first one we've hosted, and it was super fun!  Brett & Heidi, and Isabel & Cesar came.  Sadly, I did not get a picture.  But it was a night full of laughs and fun, for sure!

Mike's parents also had some friends that were coming out here for a few weeks to visit, so we ended up meeting with them for a few hours as well, that was fun.  Their name was Linda and Mike Rubin...

They wanted to see Bellows Air Force Base Beach, so Mike got them on.  It was a BEAUTIFUL day.  

And tonight we cleaned and did homework... all in preparation for our good friends Mario and Holly, who are coming out to visit tomorrow!!!  We have been planning this for a long time... I can hardly wait.

Life. Is. Good.

Resolutions

It's that time of year!  Time to set some new goals for myself...  I feel like 2012 could be one of the greatest years of my life... if I allow it to be!!

In the summer of 2008, I sold security systems.  I really didn't like it at all, but I learned some great lessons about myself, and it defined a lot of who I am today.  One of the things I learned from that summer was how to set goals.  A goal, to be a goal, has to meet some criteria...

Write it down.  It's not a goal unless you have written it down, and made a plan to achieve it.  Otherwise, it's just a wish.

Make a plan... a detailed plan, perhaps with several baby steps along the way.

Put your plan in a place where you can see it often, a bathroom mirror, in your car or room...where ever you need so that you can review it constantly!

Incentives.. Reward yourself for working hard, for accomplishing a goal that you set.

AND hold yourself accountable.  Involve other people to hold you accountable as well.  It always helps to have a friend to keep you in check with your goals, one who has your best interest at heart of course!

Last summer while Mike was deployed in Laos, I set some MID YEARS resolutions.  Because I felt like I was getting stuck in a rut, and needed to make some goals for myself and where I wanted to be.  This post is going to be dedicated to reviewing those goals... there will be a follow up post with some new goals for myself... But I just want to take some time and think about what my goals this year will be.

Without further ado... here are my MID YEAR resolutions from 2011.  Colored text is the goal, white text is my added evaluation.

 Finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the year  .... CLOSE!  I have worked oh so hard on this.  I am in Ether now.  I have been consistently studying, using the Book of Mormon student manual.  I feel okay where I am with this, because my study has been interspersed with ensign talks and messages.  Will finish by February.

 Sign up for a work out class!  One of our friends in Hawaii is a body pump instructor... MUST get details on this!  I have been doing great at this one!  I work out at the Hickam gym and go at least 3 times a week.  I have yet to go to Heidi's body pump class... But I am planning on going in January! 

 Register for school... try to figure out a way to get into ANY nursing program at all.  Start hammering out pre-requisites this semester (anatomy & phys... microbiology lab... medical terminology... to start )Check!! I am successfully enrolled in school and working hard at my first semester back.  Weber State baby! 

 Throw myself into Paparazzi Jewelry.  Get details on selling at swap meets, set up parties, talk to people Ummmm... yeah.  This hasn't been going so well.  

 Start working at Ho'okele Health  Love working here.  So far so good.

 Figure out the pros and cons of being a home health aide vs. pursing my own business with Paparazzi.  Re-evaluate goals 5 and 6 in a monthI think my previous comments answer this question...

 Finish reading all the conference messages by September 1! :DRead most of them.. not quite all of them.  

Do a random act of kindness everyday for someone This could use some work. I could be a little more outgoing and kind to the people in my life.

Welp, there you have it.  I feel pretty good about where I am in accomplishing my goals.  I'll be back in a few days with some new goals of where I want to be by the end of this year.  That's all folks!

Holiday Re-cap!

This year marked the very first Christmas Mike & I spent together as a married couple.  It was an incredible experience to have, just the two of us to celebrate the holiday!  We had a lot of fun bringing together our traditions and creating new ones...  The whole month of December was filled with conversations on Christmases we had growing up and what we did with our families.

One Christmastime tradition we will definitely keep is making gingerbread houses!  We made these last year with Skitz and Emilie, but Mike was high on morphine at the time so his building skills were highly impaired...

This year was much better!

Another fun & new tradition I decided to do was FUDGE!  My friend Emilie's mom makes fudge every year that is sooooo yummy, and around December I always get real excited for it!  Unfortunately, I was not home to partake of the goodness, so I decided to make my own!  I branched out and made a cookie dough fudge... The consistency was not quite right but it was still pretty tasty!

I decided to get especially crafty (thanks, pinterest...) and do a couple sewing projects for my parents Christmas gifts!  All us kids went in on a kindle for my Mom, so I decided to attempt sewing a case for it!  This is the finished product...

For my Dad I decided to make this remote control holding pillow... I also stuffed the pocket with macadamia nuts, for a nice Hawaiian touch...  I can't find the photo, but you get the idea.

We also spent sometime walking around downtown Waikiki and enjoying all the Christmas decorations!

The Friday before Christmas we ventured into Honolulu to see the city lights.  They had some fun displays.  We got hot cocoa and pretended like we were cold so we could get more into the whole experience.  :D

Gotta love the creepy doll in the background!

My favorite was the surfing snowman! 

On Christmas Eve we opened up our stockings and our presents... because we could.  And neither of us wanted to wait.  Okay, well mostly I didn't want to wait.  Haha!  Then we read the Christmas story from the bible.  

Christmas Day we lounged around and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  It was so wonderful.  

Finally we decided we would go to the beach and spend a nice relaxing day there...  We took some sushi and had a picnic on our rockin new beach mat!  We just laid in the sun and watched the waves roll in.  

This was the sunset on the drive home!!  Beautiful. 

It was just about the best Christmas ever!  After Christmas it seemed like New Years was here in the blink of an eye!  We spent New Years at our house watching a movie... Once 11:00 rolled around we meandered down to the beach to watch some fireworks.  We went out on this jetty and there were waves crashing around us as the fireworks went off to celebrate the arrival of the New Year!  It was very romantic.  Can't wait for the great events of 2012!